


Let our dreams linger

by BitterTea



Series: Ebb and flow [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Loneliness, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Telepathic Bond, dreaming just in general, emotional tension, vague references to Derek's sad past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:50:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterTea/pseuds/BitterTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In their early years of puberty, soulmates mark each other in their dreams. Each mark is unique, private, but it is not constant. It ebbs and flows, shifts in shape and colour as the bond evolves, grows and changes. Until they finally meet, the mark and the dreams are the only link between them. The only thing that may convey their feelings to eachother; their feelings about the bond and the connection they share. About their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let our dreams linger

Derek has the first dream when he's twelve.

Someone hands him a pen, insisting that he must choose now. The demand is warm but firm, a little urgent. He thinks he’d like to know immediately, and so he puts the tip of the pen to the neck of someone he can’t see and draws a triskelion as precisely as he can. Thick ink-black spirals on soft skin; no real colour or shape. He takes pride in his artwork: His mark, his family’s mark, visible to the world and claiming this person as his.

He sometimes since has ordinary dreams of seeing the mark on some girl’s neck, occasionally a guy’s, and of fitting his mouth over it, biting or tracing it with his finger. Sometimes their throats are bared submissively and sometimes it just peeks out of a high-necked shirt. He wonders about the day he’ll see it for real, the day he meets the one who wears his mark. Wonders if they’ll be as proud of it as he is. 

Four years pass before he wakes up in a state of melancholy. The remnants of a brief, unsure hand and solemn sincerity linger around the edges of his unconscious. When he looks in the mirror he finds an odd yellow scribble that might be a bird on his chest. His throat clenches; he’s waited a long time for this. There’s hurt in that small mark; loss. But also something like a demand for hope. A demand, he thinks as he places his palm on top of it, for a hero. He vows silently with a feeling of warmth, to fulfill it. 

…

The next time he dreams, it’s been a week since he slept in his own bed and there’s still ash in the back of his throat. 

It’s dark and damp, cold and almost gritty, and unlike the first time no one hands him a pen. Instead the other person seems to smile at him; the triskelion black, confident and glaringly possessive on their neck. Aggressively broadcasting to the world who put his claim on this person, and Derek feels hot, feels fire licking his back, feels floorboards creak under his weight and he reaches out. This time, it’s fear that creates the sense of urgency as he desperately tries to erase the mark, kneeling as the temperature surges and sweats. The lines blur and the residue sticks like a bruise, like soot, the ghost of a smudge that he can’t get off. The floor shrieks, splinters and he falls, screams himself awake and doesn’t go back to sleep.

Afterwards, the yellow bird on his chest slowly shrivels and fades. It retreats away from his chest over the course of months until it finally settles near his elbow – so pale that even he himself has to double-check to find it. Gone is the vibrant demand that made itself known two years ago; the confidence is lost and instead of determinedly declaring him taken, it hides away, makes its presence indistinguishable. It doesn’t disappear; it uses him as a shield against the world but cedes any expectations of him. He feels relief; he cannot be anyone’s hero. He takes to crossing his arms when he’s stressed, when he needs reassurance, pressing the back of his fingers against the mark, covering it. A shield he can be. 

…

He’s back for the first time in six years, sitting hunched against the wall in the burnt out ruins of his childhood home. There's dirt on his hands and he's not even twenty yards from the buried body of his last remaining family. 

That’s when he dreams again.

There’s fire this time as well, but it’s not his surroundings burning; it’s him. He’s so blindingly angry, so bitter at world and the person in front of him isn’t smiling this time. There’s a resigned apathy meeting his rage and that makes it worse. He roars and the edges of the dream seem to vibrate; crack. The next morning he sees the mark on his elbow has darkened. It’s no longer yellow but grey and neither does it resemble a bird. The edges are jagged and hostile, as if it was spooked. 

…

The day he awakes with the mark gone and the lingering feeling of grim resolution, he tells himself he’s pleased. He’s no longer fit to be a guardian; he can’t watch out for this stranger and now he doesn’t need to. It isn’t until he shrugs his shirt off and passes a darkened window that he realizes the resolution wasn’t to leave him. 

It’s with a sort of sickening deja-vu that he twists his neck and takes in the ink black swirls between his shoulder blades; the same ones he drew on someone’s neck nearly ten years ago. It’s bigger; it’s drawn with a steadier hand – meticulously penned on to his skin like a brand. It’s not a demand on him, it hasn’t been for years, it’s a threat: An aggressive declaration of protection, a warning to everyone that sees, to keep off. It’s a world from the timid yellow scribble asking to be saved, and yet there’s a soothing, nostalgic familiarity to it. He doesn’t feel like it’s restraining him; it’s not claiming _mine_ like his own original did, but instead announcing that someone, somewhere, is watching out for him. He slips a clean shirt over the sigil of his family, for the first time in many months feeling like he’s not alone.

…

The grip he has in the kid’s shirt twists the fabric and makes it bunch up weirdly across his chest. 

“Go home, Stiles.” 

The other’s heartbeat jumped when he first grabbed him; it’s been a while since he reacted like this, but he doesn’t smell frightened, just shocked. The boy grimaces, rolls his eyes and gives half a shrug - opens his mouth with an exasperated sigh, probably preparing for a sarcastic retort. But Derek’s not paying attention; he let’s go of the shirt and instead tugs his collar down to one side, staring at the faded bruise.

“What are you…Derek?!”

“Who gave you this?” he asks briskly, not taking his eyes of the dark shadow that seems unnervingly familiar. He senses the hesitation. 

Stiles closes his mouth and his pulse spikes. Then he takes a breath.

“You did.”

**Author's Note:**

> Had this finished and lying around for a loooong time, because I was trying to finish a second part from Stiles POV. :p  
> I just liked the idea of a soulmate bond that isn't set in stone, but instead changes as the people involved grow and changes. The soul-mark kinda represents their feelings towards the bond and their soulmate, and changes form accordingly.  
> Should two people no longer be compatible, the soul-mark will dissapear and another may appear. Some may have multiple marks at overlapping intervals, but it's rare.   
> Traumatic events may drastically change the way a bond appears.
> 
> When Derek is 12, Stiles is 6. Most marking-dreams occur as close to eachother as possible, so that most people have the dreams between 13 and 17 - the closer they are in age, the later the marking-dreams happen. Derek's is early because Stiles is a lot younger, and Stiles has his at 10 because of his mother dying and already having been marked.


End file.
